unfinished, but destined to be the most elaborate church edifice in America. The block above the Cathedral is occupied by the Male Orphan Asylum of the same church, next door to which is the mansion of Madame Restelle, one of the most noted abortionists of New York. On the northwest corner of Fifty-third street is the new St. Thomas’ Church (Episcopal), a fine edifice, and owned by one of the wealthiest congregations in the city. Between Fifty-fourth and Fifty-fifth streets, and on the same side of the street, is St. Luke’s Hospital, with its pretty grounds. On the east side, between Fifty-eighth and Fifty-ninth streets, and now in course of erection, will be located the Central Park Hotel, which is to be one of the most imposing structures in New York; and just opposite is the main entrance to the Central Park.
From Seventh to Fifty-ninth streets, the avenue presents a continuous line of magnificent mansions. There are a few marble, yellow stone, and brick buildings, but the prevailing material is brown stone. The general appearance of the street is magnificent, but sombre, owing to the dark color of the stone. Nearly all the houses are built on the same design, which gives to it an air of sameness and tameness that is not pleasing. But it is a magnificent street, nevertheless, and has not its equal in the great and unbroken extent of its splendor in the world. It is a street of palaces. Madison and Park avenues, and portions of Lexington avenue, are nearly as handsome, as are the cross streets connecting them with the Fifth avenue, and many of the streets leading to the Sixth avenue are similarly built. The great defect of the avenue is the poverty of resource in the designs of the buildings, but this is the only species of poverty present here.
If the houses are palatial without, they are even more so within. Some of them are models of elegance and taste; others are miracles of flashy and reckless adornment. The walls and ceilings are covered with exquisite frescoes. The floors are rich in the finest and thickest of carpets, on whose luxurious pile no footfall ever sounds. The light of the sun comes struggling in through the richest of curtains, and at night the
brilliancy of the gas is softened by the warmest tinted porcelain shades, or heightened by the dazzling reflection of crystal chandeliers. The drawing rooms are filled with the costliest and the richest furniture which is the perfection of comfort, and with works of art worth a fortune in themselves. Back of these, or across the hall, through the half opened doors, you see the sumptuously furnished library, with its long rows of daintily bound books in their rosewood shelves. The library is a “feature” in most houses of the very wealthy, and in the majority of instances is more for ornament than for use. In the rear of all is the conservatory with its wealth of flowers and rare plants, which send their odors through the rooms beyond. The upper and lower stories are furnished on a corresponding scale of magnificence. Everything that money can procure for the comfort or luxury of the inmates is at hand. Nor are such residences few in number. They may be counted by the hundred, each with its contents worth a large fortune. The style of living is in keeping with the house, and, as a matter of course, only the very wealthy can afford such homes.
As for the occupants, they represent all classes—the good and the bad, the cultivated and the illiterate, the refined and the vulgar, the well-born and those who have risen from the gutters. If shoddy finds a home here, genuine merit is his neighbor. Those who have large and assured incomes can afford such a style of life; but they do not comprise all the dwellers on the Avenue. Many are here who have strained every nerve to “get into the Avenue,” and who would sell body and soul to stay there, yet who feel that the crash is coming before which they must give way. Others there are who would give half their possessions to move in the society in which their neighbors live. They reside on the Avenue, but they are ignored by one class of its occupants, because of their lack of refinement and cultivation, and by another because of their inferiority in wealth. Great wealth covers a multitude of defects in the Avenue.
Perhaps the most restless, care-worn faces in the city are to be seen on this street. Women clad in the richest attire pass you with unquiet face and wistful eyes, and men who are envied
by their fellows for their “good luck,” startle you by the stern, hard set look their features wear. The first find little real happiness in the riches they have sold themselves for, and the latter find that the costly pleasures they courted have been gained at too dear a price.
Families are small in the Avenue, and Madame Restelle boasts, that her wealth has been earned in a large degree by keeping them so. Fashion has its requirements, and before them maternity must give way. Your fashionable lady has no time to give to children, but pets lap-dogs and parrots.
Well, the Avenue mansions have their skeletons, as well as the east side tenement houses. The sin of the fashionable lady